Patrick wrote:
"Seconded, on both counts. The ironic thing, to me, is that I agree with many CKing's basic ideas regarding acceptance of paraphyletic taxa and the like, but I still become a `cladist' when I disagree with his application of the ideas. *shrug*"

Me:
Unfortunately, that is just another one of Patrick's unsupported assertions. He claims to agree with me, and yet he calls me stupid. It is confounding!

One more piece of advice for Patrick (which will almost certainly be ignored):

Stick to data, not ideology. Cladists will fit the data into their ideology, but scientists will make their theory fit the data. Cladists see the world as being composed of nothing but holophyletic groups. Scientists see that paraphyletic groups are the inevitable result of the process of evolution.